I saw the season premiere and it interested the hell out of me. Sadly, it's 1 AM and I don't think I did a very good job with this--I loathe the ending, but like I said, 1 AM. I might go back and touch it up later. Ah well. Major spoilers for "Blind Spot", so be warned.

Disclaimer: Law & Order propery of Dick Wolf; I intend no infringement and am making no profit off of this.

The Sleeping Dragon
By: SilverKnight

Bobby had fallen straight into Hell.

Hell did not greet him warmly.

The hospital room was cool--cooler than it should have been, he noted in passing--and forbidding. He watched, silently as he was so used to doing in the past, as Eames slept restlessly. He knew, or thought he knew, of his blind spots--his weakness towards delinquent fathers, emotionally unstable mothers, abandoned or mistreated children. He also knew, with that part of his mind that remained at a constant objective angle, that he didn't deal as well with his emotional responses as others around him did. That was to say, he rarely, if at all, ever dealt with them in their entirety.

Over the past several years, Bobby had increasingly relied on Eames to help see him through what he could see with perfectly clarity in others, but couldn't hope to handle in himself. In retrospect, his right brain reasoned, that this was another blind spot he was, until now, not fully aware of.

She was nearly killed because of him. To get to him. It was disgraceful.

Once, a few years back--shortly after the whole Croyden fiasco--he had once tried to warn Eames about him and his habits. He had, in his own way, tried to implore her to understand why she had become so important, and thus, why she had to be careful. A normal woman like herself, fire-cracker that she may have well been, wouldn't know the temptations that rage and psychopathy offered him on a silver platter. She certainly would never know how, in his darkest moments, he'd contemplated what freedom he would be allowed if he'd simply let go. But he knew that beast well, and feared what it was capable of. In the end, it was one demon he could not afford to let loose. Ever.

Eames shifted imperceptibly, drawing out what might have been a whimper of fear.

Bobby's heart twisted in his chest.

Damn Jo. Damn Declan. Damn Sebastion. Damn them all. Damn them for putting Alex in the middle like this, for dragging him through deception after lie after betrayal.

...For his own failure to see what what had become of them both.

"C'mon, Bobby, think," Declan coached irritably, easily keeping pace with the taller man. "Think like Sebastion, become him. I'm already there."

He should have known then. Damn him, he should have seen it right that instant. But the heat, the fatigue, his own heartbeat pounding wildly in his ears, it caught him off guard. Like any true blind spot. "He'd..." He cocked his head to the side, a movement he had never overtly corresponded to his mentor, stammering, "He'd...go after Jo. He's already got Eames, so Jo would be next."

"Good, good, I like that!" Gage replied with exuberance, a giddy excitement in his movements that rubbed him such the wrong way that those long-suppressed demons of rage tapped against his ribcage with increasing insistence. "Now, what we do, Bobby, is we set up Jo to lure Sebastion out, and--"

Despite a thousand thoughts and emotions clogging every last usable synapse in his overtaxed brain, Goren couldn't help but grind to a halt and focus his attention entirely on Declan. "Wha--what, you're just going to do that? Hang Jo out there as bait?" he all but spat, his haggard features contorting in sick amazement. The Declan he had become the protege to had not been this heartless, had he? The Declan Gage he looked up to as a father didn't betray his own humanity for his cause. He simply couldn't have.

Declan, uncomprehending, turned to face Bobby blankly. "What else is she?"

Another blind spot. Yet another failed role model to add to his collection.

Damn him.

His cherry-wood eyes, alight with contempt and desperation, fixed on his partner's too-pale face; his intensely burning gaze following the curves and hollows with a mixture of reverence and shame. Silently, as was his way, he begged for her to wake up, to somehow make this right again. He needed her strength back, he needed her guidance and sensibility. He needed her to be alright.

Perhaps, he thought in inexplicable contemplation, this was how Jo felt so often during her early, impressionable years. Torn between roles; the profiler versus the person, the detective versus the friend.

Goren versus Bobby.

Damn them. Damn every last one of them to Hell.

His emotions were a fierce, sleeping dragon, and it wasn't often that he indulged in them without severe personal cost. That dragon, coupled with his frighteningly sharp intellect, and his imposing six-foot-four frame, could have made him a veritable juggernaut; an unstoppable force of nature that was not to be placated or trifled with.

The Gage's had done just that, and had there not been a dozen of his fellow police officers around him at the time, Declan might have very well paid for that folly with his life.

Sharply, he clamped his eyes shut and slouched against the hard, scruffy back of the visitor's chair. The bitterness did not subside, but the momentary swell of anger and panic did, and for the moment, that was all he could openly hope for. He would deal with his distaste later; Eames' safety was his primary concern.

But, an inner voice whispered in cold promise, they would be dealt with.

The sleeping dragon had awakened. And it would not stop until sated.

The End